What Happened in 1994
by AutumnSkyy
Summary: Constance Langdon said she had four children, Tate, Adelaide, Beauregard and a child she never mentioned. James Langdon, the last and unspoken daughter of Constance and Hugo Langdon recalls the events that occurred in 1994. ONE SHOT.


**Disclaimer**: I do now own AHS

**A/N: Hey guys! So I've mostly been working with a lot of Asylum based fics and some on Coven, however, this is my first Murder House fic. I remembered Constance mentioning she had four children but one was never mentioned until after. I think it was a son but the idea to make it Constance's youngest daughter just came to me and I wanted to see how it played out. At the moment its just a one-shot, not sure if I'll continue it, I might if it goes well but anyways, let me know what you guys think!**

**Oh! Also, I'll be switching Hugo's death date to the year '88. Just a small change. Nothing too important. **

What Happened in 1994

I was the youngest of my mother's children. I was born in '89 right after our father left in late '88 so I never met him. But Mother was surprised that "the bastard had managed to shoot one last time before he bailed" (Her words, not mine.) Mother said I had been both a blessing and a surprise after Addie and Beauregard. She didn't sugar coat it. Tate and I were her miracles. She would swoon and awe at the sight of us. We were her favorites. I became ashamed of this fact as I grew older.

And as I grew older I became more and more distant from my mother. She had a certain way of coddling me. She called me her miracle, her angel, which God had sent perfectly just for her. She often said this to me in front of Addie. I at the time was still small enough to be carried in her arms. My feet never touched the ground.

Mother spoiled me rotten but I never grew up to be a brat. I believe it was thanks to Tate.

Mother would carry me through out the kitchen, sitting me on her hip as she talked on and on about things that to me at the time were unimportant. Addie watched from her spot on the table asking for attention.

She was always so sophisticated, my mother. She dressed as if she was going out that night. But instead she stayed home and smoked her cigarettes. She would turn to us children who sat in front of the television and tell us how lucky we were that our father wasn't around to ruin our lives like he had ruined hers. She would then yell at Addie for eating sweets.

"Look at you!" She would yell, "Put those back!"

Addie would yell "No!" and run off.

Tate would run after her and mother would call me to her. Like the obedient child I was, I'd walk to her and she would sit me on her lap and tell me how beautiful I was. She'd run her fingers through my golden brown hair and tell me I'd grow up to make her proud.

As truth had it, I grew up to disappoint.

I grew angry over the years over what had happened to Tate. Angry because I didn't understand. Angry because our mother had not told us. Angry because she treated Addie so poorly and me so well. As if I was the answer to all her problems. She clung to me like a beacon of hope and by the time I was a teenager I was suffocating under her love. Without Tate, I was all she had left and I couldn't take it.

I remember that day like it was just yesterday. It happened so long ago and one would think they would forget but that was a day that would forever be sketched in to my memory. I was 5 years old and in my kindergarten class when the principal's voice rang through the speakers. There had been a shooting at the high school a block down. Teachers were to keep their students in class, protected.

It had been a normal day. My brother had walked me to school like he did every morning. My mother nagged him all the way out of the house.

"You take good care of her, you hear?" She yelled as she followed us out of the house.

"Yeah, yeah." My brother would brush her off, take my hand and lead me down the street.

I turned around to see my elegant mother standing at the door, a cigarette at her lips. I believe I loved my mother in those days. Well, like any child did. In those days I was too young to see her flaws, too innocent to feel her overbearing and controlling nature, too naïve to understand the faults our family had. I was living in a world where Mother ruled and I saw nothing wrong with that.

Tate, however, tried to open our eyes. He tried to expose our mother for what she really was. At five years old, I couldn't grasp the concept that my mother, who I adored unconditionally, could be bad. Tate spoke of our father and how he wished he had left with him. I never met my father so he was a stranger to me. I couldn't miss someone I never knew.

Our mother Constance was all I knew. All I had.

"Be good." Tate would say as he dropped me off at the front steps of the elementary school, "Promise?"

"Promise." I would say and intertwine my pinky with his.

He said those words every day. But that day, that day was very different. He didn't smile and he didn't speak a word the entire walk there. He didn't even fight with our mother when we exited the house. He remained silent with his eyes ahead of him, looking out in to something unknown to me. I remember looking down at my hand tucked safely inside of his. Tate always made me feel safe.

Tate wore all black. I didn't think anything of it. How could I? His clothing had no meaning to my childish innocence. But I did note that he was different. Not just his appearance, his entire being was different.

When he dropped me off at the front of the steps, he knelt down to my level and brought me closer. He looked me over; his dark brown eyes almost trembled with tears. He smiled weakly. "James." He spoke my name, "Promise me you'll always be a good girl."

I tilted my head not understanding why this time everything was so different. "I promise." I answered.

Tate smiled. "You know I love you, don't you? You and Addie."

I smiled. "I love you too."

He laughed. "Good. I'll remember that always."

Tate then pulled me in to a hug that for a five year old felt forever. It was as if he did not want to let me go. Finally, he pulled away. "Remember what I told you. What I always tell you."

I nodded.

"I'll see you after school, okay?"

"Okay."

Then he was gone.

I stood on the steps, children walking past me as I watched my brother go for the very last time. His figure disappearing in to the distance. Little did I know, he would not be back to pick me up in the afternoon like he always did.

When panic spread through the school, I remember being scared because Tate went to the high school where the shooting had occurred. I worried that something had happened to him. When they finally let us go, I ignored my teacher's voice and ran all the way home. I knew the way home very well.

Sirens and police cars passed me as I ran down my neighborhood. They all stopped at my house.

I remember yelling for my mother as I ran up the lawn. My backpack weighed my tiny body down. I could hear her screaming from inside. The policemen ignored me as I stopped outside my house, looking up at its ominous exterior, too afraid to continue.

Multiple shots rang through inside. I jumped, taking a step back. Then everything went silent. After what seemed like an eternity, men walked out with a stretcher. A body lay on it covered with a black cover. A hand hung off. My brother's hand.

"Tate?" I took a step forward. A police officer grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back. I watched as they loaded my brother in to the back of an ambulance and sped off.

"Tate!" I heard my mother's painful screams, "My boy! That's my boy!" She cried. She came out in to the porch and fell to her knees.

"Mommy!" I wiggled myself free from the officer's grasp and ran to my mother. She collected me in her arms and cried in to my hair.

"Where are they taking Tate?" I asked in my innocence.

Mother couldn't answer me.

My older brother Tate had been shot dead by a SWAT team in our home. Earlier that day he had gone to his school and had gunned down multiple students after he set our mother's boyfriend on fire. My mother hadn't told my sister Adelaide and I what had happened. She didn't want us to know. I found out what happened to Tate years later.

Addie cried a lot too. She loved Tate just like I did and the two of us cried together.

Every night since that day I would wake up from horrible nightmares and run in to Tate's room, crying his name but when I opened the door, his room was empty. We moved out of that house soon after. Mother couldn't bare it.

The last night we spent in that house, I wandered in to Tate's room. All his belongings were stuffed in to boxes. Till this day I don't know what Mother did to them. I walked to the middle of the room and sat on the carpet. Everything in my short life had changed so rapidly and my young mind struggled to comprehend.

I remember feeling his presence next to me. I looked next to me and there he sat, smiling at me. We looked at each other for a moment. I remember telling myself that Tate couldn't be dead. How could he when he sat right next to me?

"Have you been a good girl?" He asked.

"Yes." I answered, "Have you been a good boy?"

His smile saddened, "No, Jamesy, I haven't."

I reached my hand to his cheek. He took my hand in his and kissed it. "Its ok." I said, "I forgive you."

About a year later, Addie and I were playing on the front yard of our new home when a car rolled by. A frantic woman lowered her window and yelled at us.

"Murderer! Your brother is a murderer!"

I do not know how that woman knew who we were or why she had yelled those things at us. I was only six years old, almost seven. Addie ran to mother telling her what had just happened. I remember just standing in the doorway as my mother's brown eyes looked at me. She stared at me with this sense of fear. I had never seen my mother so angry and so vulnerable at the same time.

I didn't say a word.

I couldn't lie that what that woman had said hurt because it had. I loved Tate. So did Addie. He was our brother. And he loved us too. He always did everything for us. When he was alive, Tate played with us whenever we would ask him to. He would let me crawl in to his bed when I was too afraid to sleep in my own and tell me stories until I managed to fall asleep. He used to say that Addie and I were all he had left since Beau had died and our mother was a cocksucking whore who didn't love anyone but herself. He said she was the reason why our father left.

Growing up under my mother's suffocating reign was hard but Tate continued to hold me together, even after death. We saw him again after he was killed. He remained trapped in that house. Addie and I visited him every day. It didn't matter how many times the house was sold or how many people moved in. They never left.

Neither did Tate.


End file.
